The Things of Earth

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. There weren’t always children thrown in prison chambers, either. Yet, ever since The Waning, stranger things had happened in Trule. Her father had warned of these days.

There would be plagues after The Waning, he’d said, when the sun began to fade. His sermons never scared her like they did the townspeople, but that was before. Back when she’d assumed he’d be around. Before the dragons. Before her curse. Before prison.

— – —

“Open your eyes to the truth! We are standing on ground that is dying beneath our feet.” Her father was dressed in his white priestly robes, his headdress shifting slightly as he moved across the square, passionately addressing a captive audience. “The sun is waning, and with it, our crops. Will we do nothing? Will we hide in what is comfortable instead of facing the truth? And for how long? Till our children are starving?”

At this, loud jeers came from within the crowd. To the side, the other priests spoke to each other in hushed tones, visibly uncomfortable at his words. Father paid them no mind. He had stopped trying to appease them long ago.

“We must take action! We must read the ancient texts, publicly.”

Finally, an old woman from the back of the audience shakily stood to her feet, lifting an accusing finger. “Heretic!”

The singular word was all it took for the audience to erupt into chaos.

— – —

Ivory doors opened as her mother carefully entered, white light swallowing the orange glow of the candle beside the girl’s pale face. Holy paintings of justice stood in each corner of the prison chamber. Prostitutes stoned, traitorous men with swords falling out of their guts, deceptive priests in handcuffs—they were all supposed to inspire divine reflection for the imprisoned. For the month Psyche had been there, they had only inspired her dreams.

“Psyche, dear, I have a present for you,” her mother’s gentle voice seemed to waft over her, making the room temporarily beautiful. Psyche wished she could hug her, but holy laws were holy laws. Her mother would never break them. Not even after everything that had happened. Not even if the prisoner was family.

From her robes, her mother pulled out a long-sleeved dark blue underdress. The uneven stitches told her it was her mother’s work, and the length of them screamed a sense of rush. She had been desperately trying to piece the fabric together. Why?

It fell heavy in Psyche’s lap. Something had to be wrong. She wanted to question it.

“Thank you,” Psyche smiled sweetly, instead. “I’ll wear it for Darius.”

She had said it to make her mother laugh, but her mother’s eyes only seemed to darken in response. Darius was a famous heretic in Trule’s history, his punishment being the most gruesome depiction hung on the prison walls. As the myths told, his body was tied in ropes connected to four horses running in opposite directions. The painting showed his severed head, dripping blood and dragged deep into the forest. They had found the horse, but never the head.

He’d been a favorite of her father.

— – —

“Really, firefly, his death marked the end of true divine study,” Father and her were laying side by side, listening to the creek and crickets singing softly beside them. They were deep into the Valley, just a few miles further than Mother had permitted.

“Why did they kill him?” Psyche asked. “If he was so good, why do they make him out to be so evil?”

Father was silent for a moment before he answered. “That’s just the way of the priests. Bloodshed as soon as any minds begin to open. Can’t have people curious, can they?”

Psyche rolled to her side, facing him. She could feel her throat tighten as she began her question. “They won’t kill you, right?”

“You sound just like your mother,” he playfully messed up her dark blonde hair. “I haven’t even told you the myth of the rich man or the bleeding woman. How could I die before that?”

Despite him pushing each rule Mother and the priest’s had set, there was something about her father that made her trust him immediately. Psyche cushioned her head on top of her arms as she stared back up at the dark sky.

“There once was a man with everything he could ever want in the world,” her father began, “but not even that was enough for him.”

Listening to her father, Psyche had the passing thought that there was nothing more divine than the stars and the moon nestled together. Just the mere sight sent tingles through her fingers. The vastness of it all made her feel so profoundly small, as though she was finally at rest.

The next morning, Father and her arrived only to find her mother’s tired body sitting at the kitchen table. “You went further, didn’t you?”

“Honey,” Father began.

“Didn’t you?” Mother spat. She shoved a piece of paper into his hands. “The Scientists sent communications to the Priests. They saw her, Bran. Doing that—that—thing. They’ll want to take her in. What have you done, Bran? What have you done to her?”

Psyche’s fingers began to tremble as she watched her mother collapse into his arms, sobbing.

— – —

Her father hadn’t been the only one to predict The Waning. The neighboring province, Sofyocles, Trule’s greatest and only enemies, had long known the sun would begin to die off. Their Scientists had predicted it the year before.

Perhaps it was this unfortunate congruence that made the townspeople so skeptical of her father’s words, or that her father had been young and bold, two qualities Trulians associated with naivety. Sofyocles was much more sympathetic to characters like her father, but they’d have nothing to do with his religious devotion. Psyche wondered in fear what they’d have to do with her.

“Mother, what’s the dress for, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“For you, of course.” She quickly responded. “What else?”

It was strange that Mother would waste resources with Trule in the state it was, but Mother was always concerned with appearance. It was likely she couldn’t bear to look at her daughter in black prison robes. The townspeople reminded her of it enough. From outside the prison, Psyche could hear children reciting nursery rhymes. This one was new.

“Screams in the night,

Screams all around,

Screams from up high,

Screams buried in the ground.”

The dark tone meant it could only be inspired by one thing. Mother and her sat in silence for a moment.

“In the shack,” Psyche began tentatively, “do you think Father is fed grapes when he is hungry?”

Her mother ignored the question altogether, pulling cheese out of her basket instead.

As Psyche reached for the meal, her mother suddenly gripped her arm. The gesture surprised both of them. She’d broken the law.

There was a fear in her eyes, an urgency in her grip that Psyche had only felt that night.

To this day, nobody knows what happened. Psyche had been the one who had found them. A pile of priests, laying on top of each other motionless as feed sacks. There was Father, headdress pulling on his neck. Without thought, she rushed toward him, pulling at the cloth.

That was when she noticed it. Movement in his chest.

He was breathing. They were all breathing. Alive, but dead.

Living corpses.

Her fingers began to tremble. She didn’t remember what happened next, but her mother had clutched her arm like she was doing now, dragging her away into safety before the townspeople could take action.

They wanted justice, and she was the dragon girl, after all.

“Psyche, if anything were to happen, you have to promise me something.”

“Nothing’s going to—”

“Don’t let them see you. Grab a dragon, flee. Break any law you must, as long as it means they don’t see your curse.”

“Mother, is something about to happen?”

She grabbed both of Psyche’s shoulders. “Swear it.”

“I swear,” Psyche said. The panic in her mother’s voice had set something off within her bones, that tremor she knew too well. It always started farther up in her arm—the trembling—before traveling down in pulses to her fingers.

I did it. I brought the dragons. I killed them. I hate myself.

And then the voice. The whole earth was groaning. Groaning at her. Happening to her. Tree roots, growing over her chest, squeezing her heart. Stars the shade of a violent white, blinding her eyes. She was still, she was clenching her eyes tighter and tighter until her breath left. She didn’t need to open them to know the faintest glow had begun to shine underneath her fingernails. She blinked.

She was in her mother’s lap, her mother playing with her hair. The paintings on the wall felt cozy, everything was safe, but there was murder in Mother’s whisper as she said, “May he lay in the shack forever.”

Psyche knew she was talking about Father.

The doors flung open. Her mother quickly kneeled back on her mat.

Through the doors came a man and a woman in white robes, but Psyche knew immediately they weren’t the priestly kind.

Scientists.

“You must be the Mother,” the man smiled. Mother glared at him, which only seemed to make him happier. “Cheer up, now! After all, you’re the one who invited us over.”